Ast convinced me that I should really take all the obsessive firearms knowledge I've gathered over my years as an artist and compile it into a tutorial for artists who want to draw guns.

So, here's the first section's (early firearms) draft. Going to be working on and off on this; I'd like comments on usability, length of information (too little, too much, too much tangential stuff that doesn't matter to artists?) etc. Should I be assuming people know what a barrel of a gun is? Things like that. Critiques and comments will help me make this the best guide I can make it!

Duuude this is amaziing D I do think it'll be useful to include a diagram of each gun's anatomy but it's very comprehensive and well organized so far, I'm loving it. I'm a bit busy now but I'll try doing a picture later and see if it holds up. Thanks for making this!

Hopefully I can keep the link as stable as possible, but I like to work on a private doc and then push it out when I feel it's ready.

Some formatting changes mean there's a new link this time around, I cut the margins so that more of the pages can fit on a single page. Updated about to almost the repeating rifle era, but the big thing that I hope will be useful is the outline on shooting stances that I'll be expanding on. Because while guns can be copied with enough visual reference, how your characters hold them says a lot about how comfortable they are with firearms and how they were trained.

Oh, man, thanks for this. It looks really useful. Saved!
As a prior Marine, I have some experience with some trench weapons, like the M249 and M240. I've also used the M16, M4, M203, MK19, M2, and the M136 AT4, so let me know if I can be of help with any of those.

Took a week off from the guide; working on it means I'm not doing art, and not doing art makes me feel unhappy. Going to be adding some more artist-related stuff, feeling out responses from other people indicated it seemed a bit too much trivia and not enough technique. Look forwards to stuff about historical connotations, materials, designing your own guns, etc.

Joe: Actually, there is one thing I want to ask you if you were a Marine... did you ever use a 3-point sling, and if you did, how was your impression of it? I got a cheap one to try out on my airsoft reference M4, and well, I hated it. Basically what happened. But online it seems they're mainly very polarizing. People either love it or hate it.

I've seen people do that in real life.
You're right in that it's very divisive: about half of my buddies preferred the old parade-style sling, and the other half liked the three point. Me personally, I preferred the three point, since it requires less handling on your part: with the parade sling, you have to pretty much be holding onto it the entire time. With the three point, you can let go off your rifle and it would just chill there next to you.
It's STRONGLY ADVISED you do not let go off your rifle, but there are situations where it's a good idea, like pulling your sidearm out when you run out of ammo, for example (also, I've always been a fantasy nerd, so I liked to let it hang at my side/on my back and pretend it was a sword in a scabbard. Don't do that, either.)
The parade sling is a lot tighter, and offers less room for customization when it comes to slack. The three points offers a lot more freedom with that (you can even tighten it as tight as a parade sling, if you wanted to).
But yeah, personally, I preferred the three point.

Rearranged some stuff, 20th century is about 2/3rds of the way done, and actually wrote a few paragraphs of actually artist-related stuff in the front. At some point I'm going to have to rewrite the early history sections to focus more on art and less on technicalities; I am archiving it every version though, so if you like the firearms trivia you can ask for the earlier links.

Really though, if you're interested in the technical aspects, probably best to look for detailed breakdowns elsewhere on the web. I'm simplifying greatly here, and some of the stuff I am saying isn't strictly speaking true.